Re: Code of Conduct and Foundation membership

[Philip Van Hoof <pvanhoof gnome org>]

On Mon, 2009-12-14 at 22:34 +0100, Vincent Untz wrote:
> Le vendredi 11 décembre 2009, à 17:20 +0100, Philip Van Hoof a écrit :
> > I propose to have a vote on GNOME's membership to the GNU project.
> 
> So, as far as I can tell, nobody is collecting a list of members who
> support such a vote proposal. I still wanted to reply there.

I'm not planning to collect these members because I fear that doing so
at this time might hurt GNOME as a community.

I wont stop other people from doing so, and I'll support the vote too.

My personal point of view towards the illegitimacy of proprietary
software (I think mine is clear, by now) has no higher priority than the
community of GNOME as a whole.

I do still ask: what to do with this?

> For many of the reasons Dave wrote, I would believe splitting up from
> the GNU project is a bad idea. Let me add a few things...

My opinion isn't that splitting would be bad for GNOME.

We can protect our user's freedoms far better than GNU can. Let's not
lie to ourselves about that.

> The GNOME Foundation itself is a free software supporter, and advocates
> for free software, and I believe this reflects the opinion of the vast
> majority of the GNOME community.

But what if advocating free software means that the minimal support
GNOME should do for GNU, is to claim that proprietary is illegitimate?

This *is* an issue, Vincent. Richard Stallman *is* the leader of the
group that is *urging* us to make up our minds. We can not ignore it.

No matter how emotional it all is.

Well actually, we can ignore it. It does us more harm than good.

> So I would think it's safe to say that this is the position of the
> GNOME project. As such, I think the GNOME project definitely has its
> place in the GNU project, whose goal is to create a free software
> operating system.

GNOME's place in the GNU project is to help create a free software
operating system. And that's it. We're not part of FSF "because" of the
"it" of "that's it".

GNOME has no place in Richard's ideology of 'proprietary software is
illegitimate'. Because ...

A majority of its contributors and users disagree with that ideology:

http://www.surveymonkey.com/sr.aspx?sm=_2bTZVPBIOJr2Rh1hPfmoFvNXT0hZZQgd_2fCvvmvOgTgRM_3d

Alienating these people is not right. No matter the hype of today.

> That doesn't mean the GNOME Foundation fights against non-free software
> by saying that non-free software is bad and should not be used nor
> exist. We have a policy of having the GNOME platform LGPL, and so it can
> be used by non-free applications. We're happy this way. Our way to fight
> against non-free software is by writing better code, that is free.

Thank you.

This sums it up pretty well.

"Our way" is by writing better code. Exactly.

> Also, the GNU project is not the FSF. When reading the thread, I have
> the feeling that some people want the GNOME project to not be part of
> the FSF, or to disagree with the FSF. The GNOME Foundation is [not] part of
> the FSF, and we sometimes disagree with the FSF, and we're all fine this
> way.

Good, the FSF can use some criticism.

(You meant "not part of the FSF" instead of "part of FSF". You corrected
this in another reply E-mail. I added it between square brackets. Feel
free to torch me if that's impolite).

> (Note that the FSF is an advisory board member of the GNOME
> Foundation, though, and it's valuable one that we're happy to have). I
> think Andy wrote more on this [1], but I didn't take the time to read
> his post so I won't put words in his mouth :-)


Cheers & concerns,


Philip


-- 
Philip Van Hoof, freelance software developer
home: me at pvanhoof dot be 
gnome: pvanhoof at gnome dot org 
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